French police arrested around 20 people in Paris on Saturday as several hundred demonstrators defied an official ban to protest repression and executions in Iran.

Several buses arrived at Place Vauban in central Paris despite police having banned the rally the previous evening.

Justifying their decision, the authorities had cited concerns about potential clashes with regime supporters "in the current particularly tense national and international context".

Iran and the United States agreed Monday to set up communications lines to keep the vital Strait of Hormuz open and end fighting in Lebanon, mediators said, after their first round of talks in Switzerland toward ending the war in the Middle East.

The teams led by US Vice President JD Vance and Iran's Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf opened talks Sunday, as part of a two-month negotiating period set out under a preliminary deal agreed last week.

By Parisa Hafezi and Angus McDowall

DUBAI, June 20 (Reuters) - Emerging outlines of a deal between Washington and Tehran to end their war contain a stinging paradox: sweeteners to coax Iran into compliance may strengthen an adversarial force that the U.S. and its Western allies consider a terrorist organisation.

For years, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards thrived in the shadow of sanctions, building a sprawling commercial empire stretching from oil and construction to shipping, telecommunications and ports.

When Ali saw his name and that of his three-month-old daughter in the news on April 27, he fainted: they were among 69 people stripped of Bahraini citizenship in the aftermath of the Iran war.

On the same day, he got a call from authorities asking him to turn in his official documents and those of his infant. In the next days, Ali, 31, his daughter and his wife were forced to leave for Iran, never to return.

As the sound of Israeli artillery shells echoed around their hilltop homes close to Lebanon, residents of Trump Heights struggled to hide their dismay at the deal to end the war with Iran, but were not giving up on their hero in the White House.

Under the US-Iran agreement announced earlier this week to end the Middle East war, fighting is also supposed to cease between Israel and the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Iran's treatment at the World Cup in North America is a "dark point" in the history of the competition, a leading Iranian football official said Friday.

Hedayat Mombeyni, the secretary general of the Iranian football federation, was speaking to reporters the day after his organization said it would lodge a complaint with FIFA, claiming the team was being subjected to travel restrictions that were jeopardizing its performance.

June 19 (Reuters) - Diplomatic niceties broke down at the United Nations on Friday when Israel's ambassador and the U.N. secretary-general's special representative for children and armed conflict became embroiled in a furious shouting match at a public hearing.

At a meeting in New York to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict, the Israeli envoy, Danny Danon, demanded the resignation of Pramila Patten, who produced a report that blacklisted Israel for such alleged abuses for the first time, accusing her of bias.

June 19 (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is planning a trip to the Middle East next week and is expected to visit Kuwait, the UAE and Bahrain, Axios reported on Friday, citing two sources.

Rubio is expected to hold a summit with foreign ministers of the Gulf Cooperation Council in Bahrain, Axios reported later, citing a third unidentified source.

The State Department did not immediately respond to an emailed request for confirmation.

(Reporting by Ismail Shakil; Editing by Andrea Ricci and Ryan Patrick Jones)

US President Donald Trump unveiled on Friday a replacement Air Force One aircraft gifted by Qatar, which he dubbed a "flying White House."

"This is considered the world's most luxurious plane," Trump said at a speech inside the plane's hangar, praising the gulf emirate for being "so nice and providing" it.

Qatar's gift of the aircraft -- valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars -- has raised ethical, constitutional and security concerns.

WASHINGTON, June 19 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday he will go to Turkey and make another trip to China at some point in 2026.

"We're doing a lot of trips. We'll be going to Turkey. We'll be going at some point during the year back to China," Trump said at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, as he unveiled the Boeing 747 plane gifted by Qatar that will join the Air Force One fleet.

"President Xi (Jinping) is coming here in September, but we're going back for a big conference that's in China," Trump added.